1. law, govt and politics
2. government

residents’ trust in gov’t
dropping
gaming industry adjustment
‘under gov’t’s close watch’
Residents’ trust in both the
Macau government and Beijing
authorities is dropping, a survey
shows
Lionel Leong sees the adjustment
phase of gaming revenue as a “basis”
for Macau to strive for adequate
industrial diversification
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“ THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ ”
WORLD BRIEFS
NIGERIA Hundreds of
ap photo
bodies — too many to
count — remain strewn
in the bush in Nigeria
from an Islamic extremist
attack that Amnesty
International suggested
Friday is the “deadliest
massacre” in the history
of Boko Haram. An
Amnesty statement said
there are reports the
town was razed and as
many as 2,000 people
killed.
Pakistan A
passenger bus crashed
into an oil tanker in
southern Pakistan early
yesterday, killing 57
people with remains
charred beyond
recognition, officials
said.
More on backpage
With articles republished from
Caesars
owners
seek way
out of
gambling
debt
F1
3 gunmen killed
Charlie unites the
world in Paris
P13,14,15, FT
‘Freedom
of speech is
threatened’
P4,5 MDT Interview | Zhidong Hao
2
MACAU
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
澳聞
Survey shows residents’
trust in gov’t dropping
João Pedro Lau
bloomberg
T
he latest findings from
a Hong Kong academic
institute, published on
Thursday, suggested
that Macau residents’ net trust
in both the Macau government
and the central government
have dropped by 7 percent.
Political scientist Eric Sautede
said that the drop is not surprising and described 2014 as “a
bad year” for the government.
Lawmaker Ng Kuok Cheong believes that the government can
only win back residents’ trust
by stringently carrying out the
policies that the public demand.
The survey was carried out
by the University of Hong
Kong Public Opinion Program
between December 1 and 3. A
total of 502 Macau residents
were interviewed over the telephone. The results showed
that Macau residents’ net trust
in the MSAR government and
the central government has
decreased compare to a year
ago. The trust in the MSAR
government decreased by 5
percent to 53 percent, and distrust rose 2 percent to reach
21 percent. This has led to a 7
percent net drop in trust. A similar trend was also shown in
the net trust in Beijing. Macau
residents’ trust in the central
government was 52 percent,
having fallen 4 percent. The
distrust of the central government was 19 percent, rising 3
percent. This has resulted in
33 percent net trust, down by
7 percent compared with figures for 2013.
Apart from their trust in the
government, the Public Opinion Program also asked the
residents to appraise society’s
conditions and found that 69
percent of the respondents are
most concerned with issues
surrounding livelihood. This
is followed by economic pro-
blems (24 percent) and political problems (4 percent).
As for the four core social indicators, namely “prosperity”,
“freedom”, “stability” and “democracy”, the program found
that two of them have decreased according to residents.
The respondents suggested
that, out of 10, the degrees of
prosperity and freedom were
7.22 and 6.71, down 0.19 and
0.11 respectively. While the
degree of stability remained
unchanged at 7.20, the degree
of democracy has increased
slightly by 0.02 to 5.51. Nevertheless, it is still the lowest
among the four indicators.
Moreover, respondents’ confidence in Macau’s future dropped from 76 percent in 2013
to 74 percent in 2014.The
confidence in “One Country,
Two Systems” also decreased,
falling 5 percent to 70 percent
this year.
Scholar Eric Sautede told the
Times that he “would be sur-
prised if trust actually goes
up”. He said that 2014 was a
bad year for the government,
especially because of the con-
troversy surrounding the proposed compensation bill, which triggered one of the biggest
protests in Macau since the
1999 handover. The political
scientist also believes that the
Hong Kong Occupy Movement
has played a role in encouraging people to speak up about
their dissatisfaction.
Furthermore, Sautede said
that the drop of residents’
trust in government does not
necessarily translate into an
increase in trust in the opposite, namely the pro-democratic camp in Macau. Nevertheless, he thinks that it might
mean that people may support
groups and individuals who
can provide an alternative to
the current policies.
Meanwhile, lawmaker Ng
Kuok Cheong told the Times
that if the government wants
to regain the public’s trust,
the new Secretaries have to
clearly lay out their future
plans and policies in accordance with public demands.
Moreover, he said that officials have to draw up a timeframe for their works and observe it strictly. Ng said that if
the government does not solve the issues, such as the public’s current distrust, while
the economy still in good shape, it might face some serious
problems in the future as the
living conditions of residents
start heading south.
trust in msar and central government
Latest Change
Dec 23-28
Dec 6-12
Dec 1-3
2012
2013
2014
65%
58%
53%
-5%
11%
19%
21%
+2%
Net trust
54%
39%
32%
-7%
Trust in central
60%
56%
52%
-4%
11%
16%
19%
+3%
49%
40%
33%
-7%
-0.19
Trust in MSAR
government
Distrust in MSAR
government
government
Distrust in central
government
Net trust
appraisal of society’s conditions
Degree of prosperity
7.65
7.41
7.22
Degree of stability
7.61
7.20
7.20
--
Degree of freedom
7.12
6.82
6.71
-0.11
Degree of democracy
5.97
5.49
5.51
+0.02
GAMING
FOAM calls for gov’t to intervene
in casinos’ unpaid leave schemes
A
midst the continuous plunge of Macau’s gaming revenue,
two casino operators
have allegedly offered
employees unpaid leave
for as long as one year.
According to a casino
workers’ union affiliated
with the Macau Fede-
ration of Trade Unions
(FOAM), the proposal
received an enthusiastic response from the
workers, as it has been
difficult for them to
apply for leave in the
past.
The director-general of
the Macau Gaming En-
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terprises Staff’s Association, Choi Kam Fu, urged
that authorities should
regulate the conditions
offered by casino operators under such an agreement, so as to protect the
rights and interests of
employees.
“Although unpaid leave
is taken on a voluntary
basis, the government
should intervene and supervise. They should regulate the unpaid leave
scheme to see whether it
will affect the employees’
welfare in the company,
including their bonus
and salary adjustment,”
he explained.
“What’s
happening
now is that those casino workers who took
unpaid leave during the
financial crisis are now
bearing a difference in
the levels of their bonuses and salary increases compared to other
Director and Editor-in-Chief_Paulo Coutinho paulocoutinho@macaudailytimes.com
Managing Editor_Paulo Barbosa paulo.barbosa@macaudailytimes.com
Contributing Editors_Eric Sautedé, Leanda Lee, Severo Portela
China & foreign editor_Vanessa Moore vanessa@macaudailytimes.com
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Martins, António Espadinha Soares, Brook Yang, Catarina Pinto, Cyril Law, Emilie Tran, Grace Yu, Irene Sam, Jacky I.F. Cheong, Jenny
Philips, João Pedro Lau, Joseph Cheung, Juliet Risdon, Keith Ip, Renato Marques (photographer), Richard Whitfield, Robert Carroll
(Hong Kong correspondent), Rodrigo de Matos (cartoonist), Ruan Du Toit Bester, Sandra Norte (designer), Sum Choi, Viviana Seguí
| Associate Contributors_JML Property, MacauHR, MdME Lawyers, PokerStars | News agencies_ Associated Press,
Bloomberg, Lusa News Agency, MacauHub, MacauNews, Xinhua | Secretary_Yang Dongxiao amy@macaudailytimes.com
colleagues,” he added.
Mr Choi further suggested that casino operators and the government
should take the opportunity of a manpower
surplus to facilitate the
promotion of local employees.
“It is a good time for casinos to provide training
to local employees and
offer them the chances
of promotion so that the
proportion of local employees in middle and
senior positions can gradually expand,” he said.
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mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
澳聞
Crackdown on law-violating taxi
drivers greeted by association
T
he Public Security Police
(PSP) is issuing more tickets to law-violating taxi drivers,
according to figures revealed on
Friday. PSP revealed that it has
already prosecuted 352 cases
of taxi irregularities in the first
seven days of 2015. The police vowed to launch a full-scale
crackdown on illegal behavior
by taxi drivers.
The Macau Taxi Passengers
Association (MTPA) reacted
by stating that it is “delighted”
at the surge in police enforcement. “The figures show that
the total number of tickets issued increased by exactly 1,000
percent from 1,666 for the entire 2014 year (an average of 32
tickets per week) to a total of
352 tickets in the first week of
2015,” stressed the MTPA in a
statement, adding that such an
increase was not the result of an
increase in illegal activity, but
due to “a dramatic increase in
enforcement.”
“We have been pushing this
issue for six months now, and
this is the first example of a
proactive response by the government. It’s fantastic!” said
the group’s president, Andrew
Scott. “If this is an example of
how the new Chui Sai On government intends to run Macau, I
say, ‘Bring it on!’”
Mr Scott added that the “necessary action” needs to be
consistently applied, “for many
months, so that these law-
breaking taxi drivers can realize
that there is a ‘new normal’ in
Macau’s taxi industry.”
“The bad drivers need to see
the writing on the wall and either clean up their act or get out
of the industry,” he said, adding
that the MTPA “eagerly looks
forward to increased co-opera-
tion [with the PSP and Macau
government] in the future.”
The head of the PSP traffic
commission, Ma Chio Hong
said during an operation
against taxi irregularities that
there were around 1,000 cases
of refusing fares or charging excessive fares in 2014, fourfold
the number from two years ago.
In the 300 cases prosecuted in
the first seven days this year, 94
of them were for refusing a fare
or charging an excessive fare.
Ma said that since the irregularities of taxi drivers have seriously affected local residents
and have damaged the image
of Macau, “The police authority will be vigorously tackling
the taxi irregularities in a comprehensive manner in 2015.”
“Apart from the PSP department of traffic, other PSP departments will be participating
in the crackdown 24 hours a
day to cover the broader and
deeper aspects [of the taxi problems]. We strive to correct the
unhealthy trend of refusing fares and charging excessive fares
in the taxi industry in a short
period of time,” he said. JPL/BY
MACAU
3
Multi-million
prostitution ring
busted
The Judiciary Police (PJ) cracked
a large prostitution syndicate
based in a hotel in NAPE area
yesterday. Six local suspects were
arrested and 96 women involved
in prostitution were taken back
to the police station to assist in
the investigation. According to
PJ spokesperson Choi Iat Peng,
the busted ring is the biggest
forced prostitution case in Macau
since the city’s handover. The
ring’s profit during last year
was estimated to be more than
MOP400 million.
PJ investigates
case of suspected
suicide
Authorities are investigating a
case where a 23-year-old local
woman was found dead on the
sidewalk of Avenida Doutor
Sun Yat-Sen. Information
suggested that the police first
received a report at 3.14 p.m
on Friday. PJ investigators
then went to the residence of
the deceased and contacted her
family. The family disclosed
that the woman had been
battling depression and had
been receiving treatment. It is
suspected that she fell from the
rooftop of the building she used
to live in.
ad
4
MACAU
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
澳聞
Interview with professor Zhidong Hao
Catarina Pinto
R
efusing entry into Macau to Hong Kong activists or politicians might not
be a new measure of local
authorities. However, when
two professors are dismissed because of their political
activities or views, it means
some of Macau’s freedoms are
being threatened, University
of Macau professor of sociology, Zhidong Hao, stressed.
He believes Macau’s society
will remain “fairly silent” and
that social movement organizations need a strategy, as the
city currently lacks a united
front in terms of the democracy movement.
‘There’s not a united front in terms
Macau
Daily
Times
(MDT) – Several Hong
Kong activists and a
lawmaker were recently
refused entry to Macau.
It happened before but is
the situation getting worse?
Zhidong Hao (ZH) – They
were refused entry before; it’s
not new. But it didn’t happen
during the Portuguese administration; it was only after
the handover. It’s not good. I
wrote an article for the Financial Times, and talked about
the one country, two systems
[policy], and whether or not
ad
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Must have a valid Macau drivers license
Monthly Salary between MOP15,000 and MOP20,000
Plse contact Ms. Juliana at 2883 3008
Freedom of
speech is
threatened,
especially when
you have two
professors who
were dismissed
because of
their political
activities and
political views
we are becoming a ‘one country with one system’ because
economically it’s about one
system. Politically, we have
demonstrations and we enjoy
freedom of speech to some extent. But now freedom of speech is threatened, especially
when you have two professors
who were dismissed because of their political activities
and political views. That’s not
good because it’s becoming
one country with one system
and Macau is losing its features. It seems it’s getting worse, because the two professors
were fired… this has not happened before.
MDT – A new government has just taken office. Are they capable of
dealing with Macau’s major issues?
ZH – I am not sure, because
when you talk about problems
in Macau, there are not really
isolated problems: they’re all
connected. So you can’t really
expect one person to change
everything unless the chief
executive wants to change it. I
think there will be some changes because the new government needs to do something
to show that they are capable.
How much can they do? Of
that I am not so sure. Efforts and contributions from all
areas are necessary, including
the civil society, the chief executive, the central government
and the officials themselves.
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
澳聞
of the democracy movement’
MACAU
5
afford it? If they can’t afford
it, there’s this big gap between
the rich and the poor. What
kind of city do we have if most
people can’t afford a decent
apartment?
MDT – Citizens are
now pondering living in
Zhuhai or Hengqin. Is this
a solution or a problem,
given that it encourages
people to live outside the
city they work in?
ZH – It is a problem, because it’s an indication of the
gap between the rich and the
poor. Macau would become a
tale of two cities: one city is of
the rich and powerful and the
other city is the poor people
living in crowded housing, or
other people having to move
to Zhuhai to find a decent living. Both the middle and
working classes are doing just
that, so it’s a divided city.
The central government is
quite conservative and the
chief executive has not changed, so I don’t think there will
be a great difference. Civil society is fairly silent unless there’s discussion surrounding
the retirement benefits for
government officials, which is
obviously problematic. I think
society at large will keep silent
and remain the same.
MDT – Why do you think
Macau’s civil society was
so eager to take to the
streets over that bill in
particular?
ZH – It was not just that legislation; it was an accumulated feeling that the government was there just to work
in their own interests, rather
than working for the people.
Negative feelings erupted and
there were big demonstrations. These situations will be
exceptions. So in that sense I
think people will continue to
be mainly reserved, conservative.
MDT – Civil society will
remain silent then?
ZH – Yes, fairly silent. There
are some democracy advocates in the legislature but there
isn’t much that they can do.
There are also various social
movements like Macau Conscience or New Macau Associa-
tion, but these only involve a
limited amount of people and
I don’t think they have a big
plan or strategy as to how they
can achieve their goals. There
are other groups like the Macau Gaming Industry Frontline Workers, but their focus is
on economic issues. Political
advocacy will not be very present until probably the next
election cycle. In the next election cycle, there will surely be
another surge of political activism.
MDT – If people do speak
out, will they be mainly
motivated by economic issues?
ZH – Regarding the economy, I don’t think there will
be any serious problems. Even
if gambling revenue is down,
a lot of money is still being
made. The number of visitors
has not decreased so there’s
always people with money coming in. I think the government will be able to go along
pretty well and keep people
happy to a great extent, so I
don’t think there’s going to be
much agitation.
MDT – The government
has been advocating for
the diversification of the
economy. Is this a good
opportunity to achieve
that goal, now that gaming
Civil society
organizations
need to have a
strategy. They
need to have
a constant
presence
revenue is declining?
ZH – It’s a matter of willingness, vision, and determination, and I am not sure whether they have it. Concerning
casinos, they are doing something to diversify the industry
by introducing sales and entertainment in order to mainly ensure that they keep their
licenses. This has been done
by companies like Sands China; they have retail and exhibitions... But SJM is not doing
that much, it seems; I guess
they will have to do something
to keep their license, although
of course they will continue
to place gambling at the forefront of business, which is
reasonable because they’re a
gambling company.
On the part of the Macau government, they’ve been trying
(…) There are things they can
do but they might not have the
vision. For example, do they
have an idea of how much the
gambling industry should diversify itself? Do they have an
idea of how much they should diversify other sectors? For
example, talking about retailers in Macau, how much tax
do they collect from them?
How much tax do they collect
from real estate? While I’m
not sure, we can think that if
they collect more money from
them, at least there would be
an increase in the revenue
from other economic sectors.
MDT – What should the
new government address
first, in your opinion?
ZH – Lawmaking, for instance. It’s lagging behind considerably in addressing the
needs of contemporary Macau
society. They haven’t done
much there. For example, there’s the law on collective bargaining and the domestic violence bill, although the latter
will soon be submitted. But
what about laws governing
real estate and house renting?
Since the prices have gone up
so high. (…) Housing is a big
issue. They can keep building
public housing but will it address social conditions? Even
if people buy economic housing flats, they’re very small.
Or if they’re willing to buy a
more decent place can they
MDT – Going back to politics, how could Macau
have more young people
engaging in politics?
ZH – Civil society organizations need to have a strategy. They need to have a constant presence. In the groups
that competed for the Legislative Assembly elections,
there were quite a number
of young people, but once
the election was over, we no
longer heard from them. We
only hear from two or three
groups, including the New
Macau Association or Macau Conscience. Agnes Lam
group has generally remained silent, although we could argue that she’s part of
the political structure already. José Pereira Coutinho, I
don’t know whether he has a
plan or whether he’s happy
with what is doing now.
In terms of a democracy
movement, I don’t see a united front. If you don’t have a
united democracy movement,
then very little will change.
MDT – The Occupy Central movement in neighboring Hong Kong pushed
for a genuine universal suffrage. Will Macau
follow in their footsteps?
ZH - I said in my article that
we hope that Hong Kong can
succeed. Even within the current framework, there’s much
they can do. But the democracy movement is not willing to
make concessions and does
not believe the government
will make concessions either.
So it’s unfortunate because if
they don’t do it, we won’t do
it. That’s one possibility. The
other possibility is that the
central government may view
Hong Kong’s inaction as an
opportunity for Macau to set
an example. That would be
good for Macau. Even if we
just follow the current framework, it’s significant progress for Macau.
6
ADVERTISEMENT
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
廣告
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
澳聞
MACAU
Leong: Adjustment in
gaming industry ‘under
gov’t’s close watch’
Number of fire hazards
jumps 10 pct
M
T
acau government is
paying close attention
to the impact of a drop in gaming revenue upon the city’s
overall economic environment, labor market, and the
operational space for small
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), said the Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong on Friday.
Leong acknowledged that
the gaming industry is entering a deep adjustment phase, while its revenue has been
going down for seven straight months. “This reflects a
new situation for Macau’s
overall economy. The government will closely observe
its development,” he stated
to the media after a plenary
session of the Standing Committee for the Coordination
of Social Affairs (CPCS).
According to the secretary,
gaming revenues in the first
two quarters this year are predicted to extend the decline
as long as there are no major
changes in external factors.
“As to whether the new
tourism resorts’ coming on
stream in the second half of
the year will bring a positive
turn to the gaming revenue
and visitor volume, the government will make observations with a prudent attitude,” he added.
Nevertheless, Leong said
that the government has
enough conficence to cope
with the current situation,
as in the last 15 years, “it has
built a stable fiscal reserve.”
On the other hand, the secretary sees the adjustment
phase of gaming revenue as
a “basis” for Macau to strive
for adequate industrial diversification, which can help
the casinos to reach diversified tourist sources and help
the city reduce its dependence on gaming revenue.
“It also points out a new
direction for enterprises’ business concepts and for the
workforce’s career planning,”
Leong stressed, adding that
such a moment allows Macau
to better appreciate the Central Government’s previous
call for “preparing for the potential crisis.”
he Fire Services Bureau
(CB) has called on residents
to be more aware of household
fire hazards after revealing in a
press conference on Friday that
the number of call-outs for fire
cases rose by 10.4 percent yearon-year in 2014. The bureau
also revealed that discussions
have been taking place with the
Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau (DSSOPT) regarding amendments to the current regulations on fire safety.
CB responded to a total of
43,079 call-outs last year, 5.7
percent higher than the 40,856
in 2013. Amongst these cases in
2014, the number of fire callouts was 1,186, surging by 10.4
percent compared to the figure
two years ago. Ambulance callouts were still the majority of
all CB operations last year, increasing by 6.8 percent y-o-y to
36,521. The number of rescue
operations and special services
call-outs have dropped by 4.14
percent and 1.49 percent to
1,203 and 4,169 respectively.
CB assisting principal chief
Lam Io Fan said that the major
factor contributing to the in-
7
Lam Io Fan (middle)
crease in fire cases is the soar in
home fires, which were mainly
caused by electrical overloading
and unattended cooking. He called on residents to heighten their
awareness of fire prevention.
During the press conference,
CB was asked about the high
number of ambulance call-outs and whether there were statistics for ambulance abuse.
Assisting principal chief Lam
claimed that the CB does not
gather statistics on ambulance
abuse because it is not up to the
bureau to determine whether a
case is an abuse of the ambulance service. “It is very difficult to
determine [a case] based on the
available evidence… We have
regular meetings with relevant
departments such as the Health
Bureau on the issue,” he said.
Lam also said that it has been
communicating with other government departments such as
DSSOPT regarding amendments to the regulation on fire safety. Currently, DSSOPT is the
institution responsible for monitoring the implementation of
the regulation, not the CB. JPL
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8
BUSINESS
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
分析
ANALYSIS
Rich Miller
T
he U.S. is back in the
driver’s seat of the global economy after 15
years of watching China and emerging markets take
the lead.
The world’s biggest economy
will expand by 3.2 percent or
more this year, its best performance since at least 2005, as
an improving job market leads
to stepped-up consumer spending, according to economists
at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank AG and BNP Paribas SA. That outcome would
be about what each foresees for
the world economy as a whole and would be the first time
since 1999 that America hasn’t
lagged behind global growth,
based on data from the International Monetary Fund.
“The U.S. is again the engine
of global growth,” said Allen
Sinai, chief executive officer
of Decision Economics in New
York. “The economy is looking
stellar and is in its best shape
since the 1990s.”
In the latest sign of America’s
resurgence, the Labor Department reported on Jan. 9 that
payrolls rose 252,000 in December as the unemployment
rate dropped to 5.6 percent, its
lowest level since June 2008.
Job growth last month was highlighted by the biggest gain
in construction employment in
almost a year. Factories, health-care providers and business
services also kept adding to
their payrolls.
About 3 million more Americans found work in 2014, the
most in 15 years and a sign
companies are optimistic U.S.
demand will persist even as
overseas markets struggle.
U.S. government securities
rose after the report as investors focused on a surprise drop
in hourly wages last month.
Ten-year Treasury yields declined seven basis points to 1.95
percent at 5 p.m. in New York
on Jan. 9.
“We are still waiting to see the
kind of strengthening of wage
numbers we would expect to
be consistent with what we are
seeing elsewhere in terms of
growth and the absolute jobs
numbers,” Federal Reserve
Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said in a Jan. 9 interview.
The U.S. is breaking away
from the rest of the world partly
because it has had more success
working off the debt-driven excesses that helped precipitate
the worst recession since the
bloomberg
US back at the helm of the global
economy as employment rises
A man carries balloons and flowers while crossing Powell Street on Black Friday in San Francisco, California
Great Depression.
“The progress has been far
greater in the U.S.,” Glenn
Hubbard, dean of the Columbia
Business School in New York
and a former chief White House
economist, told the American
Economic Association annual
conference in Boston on Jan. 3.
Delinquencies on consumer
installment loans fell to a record-low 1.51 percent in the
third quarter, the American
Bankers Association said on
Jan. 8. That’s “well under” the
15-year average of 2.3 percent
The BRIC
nations are
facing tougher
times after
spending much
of the past 15
years basking
in the attention
of global
investors
on such loans, which include
credit cards and borrowing for
car purchases and home improvements, it said.
U.S. households have benefited from the strengthening job
market and the collapse in oil
prices. The nationwide average
cost of a gallon of regular gasoline was USD2.17 on Jan. 8,
the cheapest since May 2009,
according to figures from motoring group AAA.
While wage gains have lagged
- average hourly earnings fell
0.2 percent last month from
November - they will accelerate
as the labor market continues
to tighten, according to Mohamed El-Erian, a Bloomberg
View columnist and an adviser
to Munich-based Allianz SE.
“It’s just a matter of time before wage growth picks up,” he
told Bloomberg Television’s “In
The Loop” program on Jan. 9.
Spending is already strengthening. Households splurged
on new cars, appliances, televisions and clothing as spending
climbed 0.6 percent in November, double the gain in October, according to figures from
the Commerce Department in
Washington. Light-vehicle sales totaled 16.5 million in 2014,
the most since 2006.
“The economy picked up a
nice tailwind at the end of the
year,” Bill Fay, group vice president for Toyota Motor Corp.’s
U.S. sales arm, said on a Jan. 5
conference call. “This strength
will carry the auto industry to a
sixth straight year of growth in
2015 with analyst projections
ranging as high as 17 million.”
At $11.5 trillion in 2013, U.S.
personal consumption expenditures were larger than the gross
domestic product of any other
country that year, including
China, according to statistics
from the IMF in Washington.
The figures aren’t adjusted to
reflect price discrepancies for
the same goods in different nations -- so-called purchasing
power parity - which tends to
inflate the output of developing
nations where consumers pay
less for everything from haircuts to coffee.
Deutsche Bank economists
led by David Folkerts-Landau
in London forecast U.S. GDP
will expand 3.7 percent this
year, after climbing 2.5 percent
in 2014. The U.S. will contribute close to 18 percent to global
growth of 3.6 percent in 2015,
compared with 7 percent for all
other industrial countries combined, they wrote in a Jan. 9
report.
While the U.S. is gathering
strength, the BRIC nations Brazil, Russia, India and China
- are facing tougher times after
spending much of the past 15
years basking in the attention
of global investors.
Brazil’s debt was downgraded
last year for the first time in a
decade while Russia is heading
into recession, its economy
pummeled by the collapse of oil
prices and U.S. and European
sanctions. Growth in China and
India has slowed as both countries grapple with revamping
their economies.
“Close the book on emerging
markets driving global growth,”
Nancy Lazar, co-founder and a
partner at Cornerstone Macro
LP in New York, wrote in a Jan.
8 report to clients.
Even Jim O’Neill, the former
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
chief economist who coined
the BRIC acronym, has soured
on some of its members, saying
in an e-mail that he would be
tempted to remove Brazil and
Russia from the group if they
fail to revive their flagging economies.
“It is tough for the BRIC
countries to all repeat their remarkable growth rates” of the
first decade of this century, said
O’Neill, a Bloomberg View co-
lumnist and former chairman
of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International.
He argued, though, that even
at a slower growth rate, China
will add more to the world economy this year than the U.S.,
when measuring their output
on a purchasing power parity
basis.
The U.S. has pulled ahead of
other industrial nations partly
because its policy-making has
been better, according to Paul
Mortimer-Lee, chief economist
for North America at BNP Paribas in New York.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and his
colleagues are still weighing
whether they should buy government bonds to fight off the
danger of deflation -- a step that
the Federal Reserve first took
back in 2009.
U.S. budget policy also has
been more effective than the
euro region’s austerity strategy,
which undercut the continent’s
economy, Mortimer-Lee added.
Even Alberto Alesina, a longtime proponent of government
spending cuts, thinks the euro
area should adopt a more expansionary fiscal stance. Alesina, who is a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, told the AEA
conference on Jan. 5 that he favors more “aggressive” tax cuts
by the region’s policy makers.
Japan, meanwhile, managed
to throw its economy back into
a recession by raising its consumption tax to 8 percent from
5 percent on April 1.
Looking across much of the
rest of the world, “the U.S. continues to dominate,” Hubbard
said. Bloomberg
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
published in partnership with macauhub.com.mo
中葡論壇
FORUM
9
E
photo archive
ast Timor offers “an
excellent climate for
foreign investment,”
the president of Heineken Asia MTN Pte, Roland
Pirmez, said in Dili, who explained that the statement
was based on the “friendly
environment” he found in the
negotiations for the company
to build a factory on the outskirts of Dili.
Pirmez was speaking to Portuguese news agency Lusa after signing an agreement in
Dili with Veneranda Martins,
Timorese Secretary of State
for the Support and Promo-
The project
is expected to
create up to
1,000 jobs, 200
direct and 800
indirect
tion of the Private Sector, under which the beer maker will
build a factory in Timor Leste as part of an investment of
USD40 million.
The project, approved last
lusa
Heineken says Timor Leste has good
climate for foreign investment
East Timor’s deputy prime-minister Fernando La Sama Araújo (r), talks with the
president of Heineken Asia Roland Pirmez during a ceremony to sign an agreement
to build a beer factory in Dili
year by the Timorese government after only about a year
of negotiations is expected to
create up to 1,000 jobs; 200
direct and 800 indirect.
“We expect to start construction of the factory as soon as
possible and have it running
within two years,” he said
noting that the investments
“break-even” will be achieved
before 2020.
Pirmez also confirmed that
in addition to the brands already produced by Heineken,
the Timor Leste unit is likely
to have a Timorese own brand.
MDT/Macauhub
Trade between Brazil and China
reached USD77.9b
T
rade between Brazil and China reached US$77.9 billion in
2014, down 6 percent
from the previous year,
according to the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.
In 2014 Brazilian ex-
ports totaled US$40.6
billion and imports from
China were USD37.3
billion.
In 2013, trade between
the two countries reached a record – US$83.3
billion – but the 2014
result is higher than the
results in 2012 and 2011,
according to the released
data.
In 2014 China remained Brazil’s main trading partner.
ad
10
CHINA
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
中國
ap photo
Travelers open emergency
exits to protest flight delay
A carter drives past a China Eastern airliner parked at the Beijing International Airport in Beijing, China
Christopher Bodeen, Beijing
U
pset by a delayed flight,
at least two Chinese passengers decided to open emergency exit doors in protest as
the plane was taxiing, forcing
it to abort takeoff and landing
them in jail instead, police said
yesterday.
The latest in a growing num-
ber of air rage cases involving
Chinese travelers happened
in the early hours of Saturday
morning in the southwestern
city of Chengdu, after the China Eastern flight was delayed
by a snow storm.
Angry passengers complained about the delay and a
lack of ventilation, and a man
surnamed Zhou opened three
emergency exits to prevent the
plane from taking off, forcing
it to return to the gate, according to state broadcaster China Central Television. A total
of 25 passengers — all part of a
single tour group — were held
for questioning while the rest
continued on to Beijing aboard
a separate flight.
Kunming police said in an on-
line statement that Zhou and a
tour guide named Li have been
placed under 15-day "administrative detention" for opening
the doors and inciting passengers with false information.
The plane's ventilation system had been turned off for 30
minutes during de-icing work
to prevent fumes from entering the cabin, China Eastern
maintenance engineer Zhu
Yun told CCTV. Although the
co-pilot had been dispatched
to explain, passengers remained irate even after the plane
left the gate, reports said.
"Opening those doors was
extremely dangerous because
there was nothing to protect
passengers from the force of
the engines," Zhu said.
China's fast growing air travel
market is the world's second
biggest, but heavy traffic and
tight military control of airspace have given it the world's
worst record for flight delays.
Cancelations, delays and service complaints spark frequent
incidents of air rage at airports
and aboard flights, including
those to and from foreign destinations. Brawls between passengers and attacks on crew
are often filmed and posted
online.
Concerns over lengthy tarmac
waits prompted U.S. aviation
authorities to pass regulations
in 2010 requiring planes to
return to the gate after three
hours.
China's National Tourism
Administration said it fully supported the police action and
said it had ordered its Beijing
and Kunming offices to carry
out further investigations, suggesting more passengers could
be implicated.
The names of all those found
to have been involved would
be placed on a "national uncivilized traveler record," to be
distributed to travel related
businesses around the country, administration spokesman
Zhang Jilin said in a statement.
Names can remain on such lists for up to 18 months, during
which travel agencies can decide whether or not to accept
listed travelers.
Zhang said travel agencies
were responsible for informing
their clients about acceptable
behavior. AP
Chinese boat stretches lead in Volvo Ocean Race
D
ongfeng
Race
Team stretched its
lead at the head of the
Volvo Ocean Race fleet
in the third leg to China
yesterday.
Charles
Caudrelier's
crew are aiming to become the first Chinese boat
to win a leg in offshore
sailing's leading roundthe-world race, which
was first held in 1973.
There would be no better place to do it than
Sanya, their home port on
the southern tip of China,
which is the destination
of the 4,670-nautical mile
leg three that began in
Abu Dhabi on Jan. 3 and
is likely to be completed
around Jan. 24.
Yesterday, after nine
days of sailing, they
had increased their lead
of just under 12 miles
over closest challengers,
Team Brunel of the Netherlands.
The boats were locked
at the top of the standings before the start of the
leg on four points with
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.
The fleet still has just
under 3,000 nautical
miles to sail, including a
hazardous stretch through the Malacca Strait,
which is one of the busiest shipping lanes in
the world and separates
the Indonesian island of
Sumatra from Malaysia.
The racing boats will
need to dodge slow-moving fishing vessels and
all kinds of debris in the
much-polluted waters.
Meanwhile, Team Vestas Wind, the Danish
boat that was grounded
during leg two from Cape
Town and Abu Dhabi on
Nov. 29, was heading for
Italy for a rebuild.
The target is to return
the badly damaged vessel to the race for the final two legs from Lisbon
in June.
The 38,739 nautical
mile, nine-month race
is held every three years
and visits 11 ports around the world and every
continent. AP
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
CHINA
11
ap photo
中國
Chinese paramilitary policemen and uniformed policemen form human chains to guide pedestrians crossing a major intersection near the site of a deadly stampede in Shanghai
C
hina's
financial
hub of Shanghai said
yesterday it was canceling its famed Lunar New Year lantern festival
in the wake of a stampede
that left 36 people dead.
The announcement illustrates the spreading effects of
the Jan. 1 disaster, in which
surging crowds trampled people along the city's legendary
Bund riverfront walkway.
Events as far away as in Beijing have been canceled and
security tightened in subway
stations and other crowded
public spaces.
The upcoming three-day festival in the city's Yuyuan Garden, a warren of narrow alleys
and ancient buildings in the
heart of the ancient walled
Chinese city, drew more than
1.3 million people in 2013.
The lantern festival comes on
the 15th day of the Lunar New
Year marking the close of the
annual festivities.
The festivities typically draw
massive, sometimes unruly
crowds and in 2004, 37 people
Shanghai nixes famed lantern
festival after deadly stampede
were killed in a stampede in
the Beijing suburb of Miyun.
The company that runs the
Yuyan Garden and the Shanghai city government said in
separate statements that the
event was being canceled out
of "safety concerns."
Neither directly mentioned
the stampede, pointing to official worries over continuing
public outrage over security
lapses and a lack of government explanations.
Authorities allowed only
one day of tightly-controlled
public mourning at the site,
which has since been fenced
off on the pretext of making
aesthetic improvements.
Some victims' family members and others have reported
being followed and harassed by security personnel, a
typical tactic by authorities
who tolerate little criticism
and fear any chance of unrest
coalescing around sympathy
for those killed. For that, Chinese authorities have been
criticized all over the world.
“Seven days after a stampede
on New Year’s Eve in Shanghai, the souls of the 36 people
killed in the crush came back,
according to traditional Chinese beliefs, for a brief visit
to this world. For the return
of the dead, city officials spared no effort in their preparations,” wrote the Economist in
an article last week.
In a critical tone, the London-based magazine, conti-
nued, “Had there been such
extensive preparations for
New Year’s Eve, the stampede
might never have happened.
Instead, a light police presence was overwhelmed by the
vast numbers who flocked to
the Bund for the countdown
to 2015. The local government cannot claim to have
been taken totally by surprise. Concerns about overcrowding had led the city to cancel
a firework-and-light show on
the Bund, and the government had warned people to
stay away for fear of packed
streets.”
Following tragedies of this
kind, it is normal and indeed
important to ask if the authorities could have done more
China plan for unmanned moon
landing, Earth return advances
C
hina's bold plan to
land an unmanned
spaceship on the moon
before returning to Earth has moved another
step forward with a test
craft shifting into lunar
orbit to conduct further
tests, state media repor-
ted yesterday.
The service module of
a lunar orbiter that flew
back to Earth in November had been sitting in a
position that brought in
into sync with Earth's
orbit, known as the second Lagrange point. It
had separated from the
orbiter in November.
The craft, loaded with
support systems for operating a spaceship, will
collect further data to
aid planning of the 2017
Chang'e 5 mission, state
broadcaster China Cen-
tral Television said.
Chang'e 5 is being designed to make a soft
landing on the moon
and collect at least 2 kilograms of rock and soil
samples before returning to Earth.
If successful, that wou-
to ensure safety. But in Shanghai, such questions from
the public have been seen as
almost subversive. Dozens of
people who dared to criticise
the city in online blog posts
were interrogated by the police, according to the South
China Morning Post.
After wall-to-wall, often
emotional, coverage of the
stampede in its immediate aftermath, domestic media have
also been reined in. They are
now limited to republishing a
handful of state-sanctioned
reports. Yang Xiong, Shanghai’s mayor, said that “lessons must be learned from
blood”. Covering up criticism
is a poor way to start, said the
Economist. MDT/Agencies
ld make China only the
third country after the
United States and Russia
to meet such a challenge.
China's lunar exploration program has already
launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes, and in
2013 landed a craft on
the moon with a rover
onboard. None of those
were designed to return to
Earth. China also has hinted at a possible crewed
mission to the moon.
China sent its first as-
tronaut into space in
2003, the only other
country after Russia
and the U.S. to achieve
manned space travel independently. It also has
launched a temporarily
crewed space station.
China's program has
received Russian assistance, but has largely developed independently
of America's, which is
now in its sixth decade
of putting people into
space. AP
12
ASIA-PACIFIC
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
亞太版
Sri Lanka
Bharatha Mallawareachi, Colombo
then-Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa attends his final public rally for the presidential elections in Kesbewa
ri Lanka's new government will investigate an
alleged attempt by former President Mahinda
Rajapaksa to stage a coup to
try to stay in power when results showed he was losing last
week's election, a spokesman
for the country's new leader
said yesterday.
A "special investigation" will
be set up to probe the alleged
coup soon after the new government is formed, said Mangala
Samaraweera, the spokesman
for President Maithripala Sirisena, who came to power after
winning Thursday's election.
"Some say this was a very peaceful transition. But that's not the
truth. People should know what
happened behind the scenes,"
Samaraweera told reporters.
Until a few weeks ago, Rajapaksa was widely expected to
easily win his third term in office. But Sirisena — his former
friend and health minister —
defected from the ruling party in November, and gathered
the support of other defecting
lawmakers, opposition parties
and many of Sri Lanka's ethnic
minorities, making the election
a fierce political battle. Sirisena contested as the combined
opposition candidate.
After conceding defeat, Raja-
ap photo
New government to
S
probe alleged coup
attempt by ex-president
Flight 8501
Harry Suhartono
and Anurag Kotoky
AirAsia flight’s black box found by
divers, marked for retrieval
ap photo
S
earch teams found the black box
from the crashed AirAsia Bhd. jetliner, which
will help investigators
unlock how QZ8501
plunged into the Java
Sea with 162 people on
board.
Divers identified the
location of the black box
and marked the area for
retrieval, Transport Ministry spokesman J.A.
Barata said yesterday,
without specifying the
exact location. The cockpit-voice recorder and
flight-data recorder are
together known as the
black box.
The
development
should help answer why
the Airbus Group NV
A320 plane crashed en
route to Singapore from
Surabaya,
Indonesia.
Investigators use information from black boxes to reconstruct the
final moments before
a crash and sometimes
come up with recommendations to prevent
other disasters.
“The black box records
critical aircraft flight
parameters,” said Mark
D. Martin, chief executive officer of Dubai-based Martin Consulting
paksa left his office and the official presidential residence on
Friday, saying he respected the
people's mandate.
Samaraweera, however, said
Sunday that Rajapaksa had
made an attempt to deploy the
army and police to stop the
counting of votes when initial
results showed he was headed
for defeat.
He said Rajapaksa convened
the chiefs of the police and the
army, as well as the attorney general, at midnight Thursday and
asked them to come up with a
plan to stop the vote counting.
Samaraweera said the three officials opposed the move.
Calls to Rajapaksa's media
secretary and officials from
his United People's Freedom
Alliance coalition were not
answered on Sunday.
"People should know about
the dangerous situation that
existed and Rajapaksa's coup to
bury the country's democracy,"
said Samaraweera, adding that
the new government's first task
would be "to probe this coup
and reveal to the country what
really took place."
Sirisena assumed his duties
on Friday and the new government is expected to be formed
on Monday, a day before Pope
Francis arrives in the island
nation for a much-anticipated
visit. AP
Members of National Search And Rescue Agency carry the airplane parts found floating in the water near the site where AirAsia Flight 8501
disappeared at Kumai port in Pangkalan Bun
LLC. “This will be vital
in understanding what
happened during the
last crucial moments of
the flight.”
Flying at 32,000 feet,
the plane’s pilot had
asked to rise to a higher
altitude, citing clouds,
officials
have
said.
By the time air traffic
controllers responded
some two minutes later there was no reply
from the plane. There
were storms along the
plane’s flight path, yet
other planes managed
to fly through the same
area at the same time
without incident.
Search teams looking
for the black box deployed side-scan sonar,
pinger locators and divers after finding the
tail on Jan. 7. The black
boxes, which are encased in bright orange to
facilitate their retrieval, are waterproof, fortified and designed to
emit an electronic signal underwater for 30
days to help searchers
find them.
Safety advocates have
been pushing for years
to improve black boxes
by enabling them to
float and stream data to
ground stations in real
time. The U.S. National
Transportation Safety
Board held a forum in
October on the subject,
and “is currently exploring what the next steps
might be,” including
possible safety recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration, Peter Knudson,
an NTSB spokesman,
said in an e-mailed statement.
A spate of crashes in
the past decade prompted Indonesia in 2008
to amend laws and
boost plane-safety checks after the European
Union imposed a ban on
its carriers from flying
to Europe. The ban has
been partially lifted since then. Bloomberg
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
分析
Coulibaly’s
widow, who has
been named as
an accomplice, is
believed to have
traveled to a
Turkish city near
the Syrian border
Coulibaly took over the kosher
grocery, demanding freedom for the
brothers who carried out the massacre at newspaper Charlie Hebdo. At
the time, the brothers were trapped
in a printing house near Charles de
Gaulle airport.
All three men were killed in nearly
simultaneous raids by security forces.
Five people detained in connection
with the three days of bloodshed in
France were released from custody,
the Paris prosecutor's spokeswo-
he al-Qaida offshoot that claimed
to have masterminded
the bloody rampage in
France has been the
most active of the terror network's branches
in trying to strike in the
West.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said it directed the attack against
the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in
Paris "as revenge for the
honor" of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
The strike would be the
Yemen-based branch's
first successful strike outside its home territory
— and a triumph for its
trademark double-strategy of waging jihad in
Yemen to build its strength to strike abroad.
At least one of the two
brothers involved in the
attack on the weekly
traveled to Yemen in
2011 and either received
training from or fought
alongside the group, authorities say. A U.S. intelligence assessment described to the Associated
Press shows that 34-year
-old Said Kouachi was
trained in preparation to
return home and carry
out an attack.
Formed in 2009 as a
merger between the terror group's Yemeni and
Saudi branches, AQAP
has been blamed for a
string of unsuccessful
bomb plots against American targets.
These include a foiled
plan to down a Detroit
-bound airliner in 2009
using a new type of explosive hidden in the
bomber's
underwear,
Amedy Coulibaly
man said earlier yesterday. Family
members of the attackers have been
given preliminary charges, but prosecutor's spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said no one remained in detention yesterday over the
attacks that left 17 people dead.
Coulibaly's widow, who has been
named as an accomplice, is believed to have traveled to a Turkish city
near the Syrian border and then all
traces of her were lost, according to a
Turkish intelligence official, who was
not authorized to speak on the record.
Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi
methodically massacred 12 people
at the Charlie Hebdo offices, led
police on a chase for two days and
were then cornered Friday at a printing house near Charles de Gaulle
Airport. Separately, Coulibaly shot a
policewoman to death and attacked
the Paris kosher market, threatening more violence unless police let
the Kouachis go. Four hostages died.
At the end of the video Coulibaly
calls for others to carry out similar
attacks.
In Germany, arsonists early Sunday attacked a newspaper that republished Charlie Hebdo's cartoons.
Two men were detained. No one
was hurt in the fire, but the newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost said
several files in its archives were destroyed. AP
ap photo
T
Soldiers inspect the wreckage of a vehicle destroyed during fighting with
al-Qaida militants in Majala of the southern province of Abyan
and another attempt a year
later to send mail bombs
hidden in toner cartridges
on planes bound to the U.S.
from the Gulf.
The group's lead bomb
maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri,
is believed to have created
the explosives used in both
foiled plots.
Bill Roggio, editor of the
Long War Journal, which
chronicles militant activities, said Yemen's branch
of al-Qaida has managed
to seize territory inside
Yemen, provide training
and support for extremist
groups operating in Syria,
Iraq and other regions, and
promote "lone wolf" attacks in the West.
"They are active in the
heart of the Middle East.
They threaten the Yemeni
government and they are
directing their activities
externally as well," he said.
"And they are serving to
train and support in other
theaters."
The group's leader, Nasser al-Wahishi, spent years
as Osama bin Laden's personal assistant before returning to his native Yemen. His close ties to bin
Laden gave him influence
within the group's various
branches and led to him
assuming leadership of the
core group after the al-Qaida leader's death.
His focus on networking
with other militant groups
in Africa, Iraq and Syria
gave the Yemen branch
particular prominence in
the network.
The group was the first to
use English publications to
reach out to supporters in
the West, with the launch
in 2010 of its English-language magazine, Inspire.
It featured commentary by
a radical U.S.-born cleric,
Anwar al-Awlaki, who was
killed in a U.S. drone strike
in Yemen in 2011, but whose words are still influential in cyberspace.
The group has repeatedly
threatened Charlie Hebdo
and other cartoonists who
have satirized the Prophet
Muhammad. Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of the 12 people slain in Wednesday's
attack on the magazine,
was on a hit list published
in a 2013 edition of Inspire. AP
ap photo
A
video emerged Sunday
purporting to show the
gunman who killed a
French policewoman and
four hostages at a kosher grocery,
pledging allegiance to the Islamic
State group and defending the attacks on the satirical newspaper and
the Jewish store.
The SITE Intelligence Group said it
had verified the video, which shows
a man resembling Amedy Coulibaly
with a gun, exercising and giving
speeches in front of an Islamic State emblem. He defends the attacks
carried out on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, police and the
Jewish store.
"What we are doing is completely legitimate, given what they are
doing," Coulibaly told the camera
in fluent French. "You cannot attack and not expect retribution so you
are playing the victim as if you don't
understand what's happening."
Associated Press, Cairo
ap photo
Lori Hinnat, Paris
13
Al-Qaida in Yemen urges
local and international jihad
Terrorism | 3 attackers killed
Video: Paris
grocery gunman
claims allegiance
to IS group
WORLD
prosecutor: grocery gunman
linked to 3rd shooting
A prosecutor says the shooting
of a jogger in a Paris suburb on the
same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre has been linked to the gunman
who killed a policewoman and four
hostages at a kosher grocery.
In a brief statement yesterday, the
prosecutor said ballistics tests on shell
cases from the shooting Wednesday
in Fontenay aux Roses linked them to
the automatic weapon at the kosher
store stormed two days later. The
prosecutor said the jogger was seriously wounded.
A suspected Yemeni al-Qaida militant, center, holds an Islamist banner as he stands behind bars during a court
hearing in state security court in Sanaa
14
WORLD
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
分析
Terrorism | Bullets not bombs
K
alashnikov assault rifles. Plenty of ammunition.
Molotov cocktails, a grenade, a
death-dealing Skorpion machine
pistol and a few handguns. Plus a
revolving light that could be placed on a car roof to make it look
like an undercover police car.
The list of weapons— along
with a jihadi flag — carried by
the French Muslim terrorists
who launched the Charlie Hebdo attacks is frightening, especially given al-Qaida's warning
of further such assaults. And it
also represents a striking change for western Europe, where
gun crime is far more rare than
in the United States.
The relatively heavy weaponry — a staple of recent attacks — seems to indicate that
terrorist networks are moving
away from bombs in favor of
military-grade assault rifles
and machine guns backed by
smaller automatic pistols.
Gun attacks spread a different
[Terrorists] are
using complex
multiple armed
assaults that
are just as
effective and
much easier
to do than
explosive
device
Magnus Ranstorp
Swedish National Defense
College
Masked gunman fire their weapons outside the French satirical newspaper Charlie
Hebdo’s office in Paris
kind of terror than bombings:
more personal, more focused,
and able to be drawn out into
the kind of protracted urban
drama that seizes a society's attention for days. Even in Europe, guns can be easier to acquire, transport and conceal than
explosives.
The mini-arsenal police found after the final shootout with
brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi even included an advanced
rocket launcher — with a loaded rocket ready for firing.
The movement toward use
of heavy weaponry instead of
bombs was evident with the
2012 attack that killed three
Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi,
and three paratroopers in Toulouse, France — as well as the
2014 killing of four people at the
Jewish Museum in Brussels by
an extremist with a Kalashnikov.
"The violence is becoming
more focused at specific groups,
Jewish targets, military targets, police targets, and they are
using complex multiple armed
assaults that are just as effective and much easier to do than
explosive devices," said Magnus
Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist
with the Swedish National Defense College.
He said the trend started
when terrorist strategists saw
the relative success of the 2008
raid in Mumbai. A small group
of well-armed, well-trained
commandos was able to paralyze a major city for several days,
leaving more than 160 dead.
Counter-terrorism
officials
warned at the time that the successful tactics would catch the
eye of other plotters looking for
a more reliable alternative to
homemade explosive devices.
Western intelligence agencies
fear terrorists may now be plotting still more attacks using relatively simple, low-tech tools.
Denmark's Security and Intelligence Service had acknowledged in its latest terror assessment that plotters can find
"easily accessible weapons" including knives, small arms and
small bombs, inside Denmark
for use in attacks.
The use of bombs has become more problematic in recent
years as European law enforcement officials have greatly
increased tracking of precursor
chemicals that can be used to
Arsonists attack German
paper that published
French cartoons
Kirsten Grieshaber, Berlin
P
olice in Germany
have detained two
men suspected of an arson attack early yesterday
against a newspaper that
republished the cartoons
of French weekly Charlie
Hebdo.
The newspaper Ham-
burger Morgenpost said
on its website the overnight arson attack destroyed several files in its
archive, but didn't injure
anyone.
Hamburg police said it
had detained the two young men near the newspaper building.
Police
spokeswoman
Karina Sadowsky told
The Associated Press several stones and a Molotov cocktail were found in
the newspaper's archive
in the basement of the
building.
She didn't identify or
give any further details
about the suspects.
A spokesman for the
make explosives. Bombs carry a
high risk of detection when the
components are being assembled, and they are inherently
unstable and often malfunction, with deadly results for the
hapless bomb makers.
In contrast, it is relatively easy
for terrorists with underworld connections to obtain heavy
weapons on the black market,
particularly in the Balkan countries of Bosnia, Serbia and
Croatia.
Following the collapse of
the Soviet Union, hundreds
of thousands of heavy weapons became available at black
market arms bazaars in Hungary and other former Soviet
bloc countries. Those weapons
helped fuel the Balkan wars,
and are still available today for
buyers with good connections
and ample cash. More than
500,000 weapons were also
stolen from Albanian arms depots in 1997, adding to the black market flow.
European Commission documents indicate that nearly
500,000 other weapons lost
or stolen within the European
Union remain unaccounted
for, and cite an increase in the
number of civilian and military
weapons stolen in France.
A 2013 report states that "large amounts of powerful military grade weapons" have reached the European Union since
the collapse of the Soviet bloc
and the fighting in the Balkans.
The weapons are often smuggled in cars or buses in small
quantities to avoid detection. It
also says upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa may
make more stolen or surplus
military weapons available to
Europe's criminal gangs.
Still, it takes planning and
care to transport weapons from
the Balkans or eastern Europe
into western Europe and particularly into Britain, which as an
island can more easily monitor
points of entry.
Britain, which has warned police officers they are likely targets of terror plotters, recently
broke up a scheme to get weaponry to terrorists plotters.
Italy, with its strong Mafia
tradition, is seen as a likely conduit for heavy weapons heading
toward France and other points
in western Europe even though
assault weapons use there is
very rare.
Ranieri de Maria, a legal expert for the National Association of Arms and Munitions
producers in Italy, said he believes Italy is used by weapons
traffickers as "a transit country
between the Balkans and Europe." Even so, he noted, "it has
been a number of years since
there has been any attack with
an assault weapon."
Morten Storm, a Dane who
claims to have infiltrated alQaida in Yemen on behalf of
western intelligence agencies,
said he believes the Charlie Hebdo plotters had been laying
low inside France while "waiting for the arms and weapons
for the attack."
It was evident from video of
the initial assault that the attackers were well trained in weapons use. They did not make
emotional "rookie" mistakes
like spraying the premises with
automatic weapons fire but
instead carried out the killings
quickly and efficiently.
The concern, for Europeans,
is that a pattern might emerge:
hundreds of jihadis have returned to their home countries on
the continent after receiving
weapons training in Syria and
other conflict zones. AP
ap photo
Gregory Katz, London
ap photo
Paris gunmen arsenal: Kalashnikovs,
rocket launcher, grenade
A firef truck sits outside the building of the ‘Hamburger Morgenpost’
in Hamburg, northern Germany
Hamburg fire department
said they were first alerted when a security company called them after
the building's fire alarms
went off, shortly after 2
a.m.
"We quickly managed
to extinguish the fire,"
spokesman Joern Bartsch
said.
The Hamburg tabloid
newspaper published the
Charlie Hebdo cartoons
the day after the attack
against the newspaper in
Paris to express its solidarity with the slain journalists.
Several other national
and local German newspapers also published the
cartoons. They are now
getting police protection.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere
called on all citizens to be
vigilant in their everyday
lives. AP
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
分析
15
People join rallies worldwide
to honor Paris victims
ap photo
T
housands of people began a march at
Paris’s Place de la Republique, led by world
leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas,
to mark France’s worst terror
attack in more than half a century.
“Paris is the capital of the world today,” President Francois
Hollande said as he received
dignitaries from around the
world at the Elysee Palace.
Three distinct yet connected
terror attacks in the city, including in the offices of Charlie
Hebdo magazine and a kosher
grocery, claimed 17 victims last
week. Three attackers were killed, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls saying France was at
“war against terrorists, Jihadists, Islamic fundamentalism.”
Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed for
the march, which features 56
world leaders. Among them are
Prime Minister David Cameron
of the U.K., German Chancellor Angela Merkel, King Abdullah of Jordan, Palestinian
President Abbas and Israel’s
Netanyahu, along with leaders
of Spain, Italy, the European
Union, Turkey and Tunisia.
The U.S. will be represented by
the ambassador to France, Jane
Hartley.
“Usually when you have these kind of events with very,
very important people, they are
WORLD
Today, Paris is
the capital of
the world
Francois Hollande
People watch from their roof-top apartment as some thousands of people gather at
Republique square in Paris, France
planned months in advance,”
said Martin Innes, the head of
the Police Science Institute at
Cardiff University in Wales.
“They know that the folks that
they’re opposed to would see
this as a great target.”
The march starting at Place de
la Republique, finishing at the
Place de la Nation - less than
a mile from the kosher grocery
where four hostages perished.
It will comprise two routes:
one, three kilometers along
the Boulevard Voltaire, and a
second winding further to the
north along the Boulevard de
Menilmontant, and along the
Avenue Philippe- Auguste. The
Interior Ministry declined to
specify which route the heads
of state would follow.
France will deploy 4,300 police, including 150 in plain clothes to protect the leaders, as
well as 1,350 soldiers across
Paris for the demonstration,
in which the Interior Ministry
expects “several hundred thousand” people to take part. Each
leader probably will have their
own detail as well.
“The fight against terrorism is
a global cause,” French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius said
on Europe 1 radio yesterday.
“There will be representatives
of all countries of the world because this is a global cause.”
The European Union plans
to tighten borders and improve the exchange of intelligence
within the bloc to combat the
threat of Islamist terrorism,
Cazeneuve said after EU interior ministers meeting in Paris
today. They agreed to do more
to address the flow of so-called
foreign fighters between Euro-
pe and Syria and Iraq, including
through sharing intelligence
to better identify them at the
28-nation EU’s borders.
Briefing reporters after the gathering that included representatives of the U.S. and Canadian
government, he said the EU
also needed better exchange of
information on air passengers
within Europe, tighter controls
on weapons trafficking and called for more help from Internet
companies to counter terrorist
propaganda. “We are determined to fight against terrorism
together,” Cazeneuve said.
An estimated 700,000 people
demonstrated across France on
Saturday, including Toulouse,
Lyon, Rennes, Nice and Marseille. Rallies were also planned
in London, Madrid and New
York — all attacked by al-Qaida-linked extremists — as well
as Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm,
Tokyo and elsewhere.
“We will come out of this
stronger,” Hollande said in
a televised address on Jan.
9. “We are a free people that
won’t give in to pressure, that
isn’t afraid.” MDT/Agencies
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16
INFOTAINMENT
what’s ON
...
12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
資訊／娛樂
TV canal macau
Exhibition of Oil Paintings & Collages
by Marco Szeto
Time: 10am-7pm
Until: February 18, 2015
Venue: Dare to Dream flagship store
13:00
TDM News (Repeated)
13:30
News (RTPi) Delayed Broadcast
17:35
Brazil Avenue (Repeat)
18:30
Non-Daily Portuguese News (Repeated)
19:30
Soap Opera
and art gallery, Calçada da Barra No.16 A,
Edificio San Chak, Macau
Admission: Free
Enquiries: (853) 2830 2012
20:30
Main News, Financial & Weather Report
21:00
Non-Daily Portuguese News
21:30
TDM Sports
22:10
Brazil Avenue
23:00
TDM News
23:30
Non-Daily Portuguese News (Repeated)
00:00
Documentary Series
01:10
Main News, Financial & Weather Report (Repeated)
The Promotion Project of Macau Artists,
“Exhibition of photos by Tam Kai Hon”
Time: 10am-7pm (open in public holidays)
Until: January 18, 2015
Venue: UNESCO Centre of Macau,
Alameda Dr. Carlos d’Assumpção
Admission: Free
Enquiries: (853) 2872 7066
“Discovering Solid Ideas:
Exhibition of Commercial Photographic
Work by Derry Sio & His Students”
Time: 12pm-10pm
cinema
cineteatro
08 Jan - 14 Jan
(Mondays to Fridays, Closed on public holidays)
Until: January 25, 2015
Venue: Educational Restaurant
and Team Building, IFT
Enquires: 2856 1252
Hengqin Today Photos and Videos
Creative Exhibition
Time: 12pm-7pm (Closed on Tuesdays)
Until: February 8, 2015
Venue: Ox Warehouse,
corner of Avenida Do Coronel Mesquita
and Avenida Do Almirante Lacerda
Admission: Free
Enquiries: (853) 2853 0026
Exhibition “Between Science and Art:
The Marvels of Asia in the Eyes of Polish
Jesuit Michał Piotr Boym, SJ.”
Time: 10am-7pm (Mondays to Saturdays)
Taken 3_
room 1
2.00, 3.55, 5.50, 9.30 pm
Director: Olivier Megaton
Starring: Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Framke
Janssen
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 109min
Night at the museum: secret of the tomb_
room 1
7.45 pm
Director: Shawn Levy
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 97min
11am-7pm (Sundays)
Until: January 18, 2015
Venue: Sir Robert Ho Tung Library
Enquiries: (853) 2837 7117
Admission: Free
Macau Science Centre
Time: 10am-6pm (Closed on Thursdays)
Address: Avenida Dr. Sun Yat-Sen
Admission: Exhibition Centre: MOP25
Planetarium (Dome/Sky Shows): MOP50
Planetarium (3D Dome/3D Sky Shows): MOP65
Enquiries: (853) 2888 0822
Offbeat
Bucharest metro officials vow
to fight ‘no pants’ stunt
Romanian subway officials have gotten their knickers in
a twist over a planned stunt in which people will ride the
Bucharest subway without their pants.
Briefed about plans, the Metrorex subway managers said
Friday that those “who disturb public order or are indecent
will be fined,” and reported to the police.
The No Pants Subway Ride began in 2002 in New York as
a stunt and has taken place around the world since then.
Organizers call it “an international celebration of silliness”
and staged it in dozens of cities yesterday.
Sub-zero temperatures are forecast for Sunday (yesterday) in Bucharest, when participants are expected to turn
up at a downtown subway station wearing coats, hats,
scarves and gloves — but no pants.
this day in history
1991 US Congress votes
for war in Iraq
The United States Congress has voted to authorise the
use of military force against Iraq to end its occupation of
neighbouring Kuwait.
The vote seals the United Nations’ 15 January deadline for the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, to order his
troops out of Kuwait, or face military action.
After three days of sometimes heated debate, the House
of Representatives passed the motion authorising use of
force by 250 votes to 183.
The Democrat-controlled Senate vote was far closer, at
52 to 47, but was not as narrow as had been feared.
It is the first time Congress has approved military action
since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 at the start
of the Vietnam War, and it was by no means a foregone
conclusion.
At times the Senate vote was too close to call, and some
were predicting the president would be forced to go to
war without Congressional backing.
The House of Representatives added one condition to
the motion: that all diplomatic and peaceful means of
averting war should be exhausted.
It has also made it clear it will withdraw its support if the
war becomes prolonged or results in heavy casualties.
President Bush welcomed the votes, saying they represented the “last best chance for peace” and sent “the
clearest message to Iraq that it cannot scorn the January
15 deadline”.
He said he had not yet made a final decision to launch
an attack on Iraq, but warned it would be “sooner rather
than later” if Saddam Hussein did not withdraw.
Senior Washington sources said the president had obtained permission from the British, Saudi Arabian and
Egyptian governments to launch an attack at only a few
minutes’ notice.
The tough line was reinforced by the British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, in Abu Dhabi on a trip to the Gulf.
“He [Saddam] will be forced out,” he said. “We are coming to a decision on this. There is no reason for a long
delay.”
In a last-minute effort to avert war with diplomacy, the
UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, arrived in
the Iraqi capital Baghdad yesterday with his latest five
-point peace plan endorsed by EC foreign ministers.
He met Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, this evening
and is due to meet Saddam Hussein tomorrow. However,
although Washington publicly supports his efforts, all preparations are for imminent war.
Seventh Son_
room 2
(2D) 2.30, 4.30, 9.30 pm
(3D) 7.30 pm
Director: Sergei Bodrov
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 102min
Women who flirt_
room 3
2.30, 4.30, 7.30, 9.30 pm
Director: Pang Ho-Cheung
Starring: Zhou Xun, Huang Xiao Ming
Language: Mandarin (English/Cantonese)
Duration: 97min
macau tower
01 Jan - 21 Jan
Taken 3_
2.30, 4.30, 7.00, 9.30 pm
Director: Olivier Megaton
Starring: Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Framke
Janssen
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 109min
Courtesy BBC News
In context
The last-minute diplomacy by Perez de Cuellar and others came to
nothing.
Iraq continued to refuse to comply with the UN ultimatum for its
troops to withdraw from Kuwait, and at 2330 GMT on 16 January
1991, Operation Desert Storm began with a devastating aerial bombardment of Baghdad.
After more than a month of intensive air attacks, the Allies began a
land offensive on 24 February. One day later, the Iraqi army began
retreating.
On 28 February, President George Bush declared victory.
Kuwait was liberated, but the Gulf War left Saddam Hussein in
power.
The US and Britain launched a second war against Iraq in 2003.
Saddam Hussein was overthrown and captured. He was later tried
for war crimes by an Iraqi court, sentenced to death and executed.
A democratically-elected government was sworn in after elections
in 2005.
However, it has proved very difficult to find an acceptable balance
of power between Iraq’s national groups, and the country continues
to be destabilised by violent extremists.
American and British troops have so far been unable to pull out
despite repeated guerrilla attacks which have killed more soldiers
than the war itself.
mon 12.01.2015
th Anniversary
資訊／娛樂
Taurus
Mar. 21-Apr. 19
April 20-May 20
Avoid the impulse to critique every
little thing today — there are enough
people doing that! Just make sure
that you’re available when others ask
you for advice. Then you can be free
with criticism.
Are you ready for romance? It’s a
good day to scope out new prospects
or to recommit yourself to your
relationship. You are definitely ready
to take things to a new level in that
part of your life.
Gemini
Cancer
May 21-Jun. 21
Jun. 22-Jul. 22
It’s a good time for you to deal
with life on your terms — but that
does involve a little extra work,
unfortunately. Take care of all
those little errands that have been
piling up lately.
You don’t ordinarily relish detailoriented tasks, but on a day like
today, you can see the advantages.
It’s a great day to clean up those
databases or to solve thorny
problems with many aspects.
Leo
Virgo
Jul. 23-Aug. 22
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
You feel a bit quieter and more
reserved than usual — and that
may extend to all sorts of aspects
of life. It’s a good time to kick back
and let your energy meter fill back
up. It shouldn’t take long!
Cleanliness is next to godliness
— so you’re that much closer to
divinity today. You need to clean
up around the house or at work,
and you may inspire others to
follow your lead.
Libra
Scorpio
Sep.23-Oct. 22
Oct. 23 - Nov. 21
It’s one of those days when you are
better off staying put — in every
sense. Moving forward is likely to
cause more problems than it solves,
but the good news is that you should
be back in the game really soon.
Your thirst for knowledge makes
itself known early today — so drink
up! You should find that things start
to get a lot more interesting after
you’ve absorbed this latest round of
intelligence.
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
It’s all about the details right now
— and that means you’ve got to
pay closer attention! It’s not a good
time to pass the buck, though you
can, of course, call in a favor or two
if that helps.
Some new information comes
your way that changes almost
everything you thought you
knew about a person or topic of
interest. It’s a great time to keep
an open mind. This is positive!
Aquarius
17
The Born Loser by Chip Sansom
YOUR STARS
Aries
INFOTAINMENT
SUDOKU
Weather
Min
Easy
Medium
Feb.19-Mar. 20
Try to take extra care with your work
dealings — you have got to make sure
that you’re being treated right. At the
same time, you need to make sure
that you’re treating everyone else
with respect!
Do you understand who you’re
really dealing with? That question
may be hard to answer on a day like
today, but the very fact that you’re
asking it should help point you in
the right direction.
Hard
Crossword puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com
Down: 1- IRS IDs; 2- Codger; 3- Organization to promote theater; 4- Fascinate;
5- Take a load off; 6- Folk singer Phil; 7- Contort; 8- Big name in insurance; 9Madrid Mrs.; 10- Confused; 11- Mother
of Hermes; 12- Fish appendages; 13Friday’s solution
High-ranking NCO; 18- Image of a deity;
19- Arrested; 24- Arid areas; 26- Edible
seed parts; 27- Old-womanish; 28- Not
express; 29- Actress Christine; 30Distinctive quality; 32- Cornerstone abbr.;
33- Stable compartment; 34- Flavor; 37River to the Ubangi; 40- Rum cocktail;
45- Respire; 46- Passage for walking;
48- Large homopterous insect; 50- Like
___ not; 52- Taj ___; 54- About; 55- Bingo
call; 56- “Judith” composer; 58- Not many;
60- Hindu music; 61- Make ___ for it; 62Minn. neighbor; 64- Xenon, e.g.; 65- Takes
too much
clear/smoggy
Beijing
-6
4
Harbin
-25
-11
Tianjin
-3
5
clear/cloudy
Urumqi
-10
0
clear
Xi’an
-2
8
cloudy/overcast
Lhasa
-11
1
clear
Chengdu
3
13
cloudy
Chongqing
7
14
overcast/cloudy
Kunming
0
13
cloudy/clear
Nanjing
1
10
cloudy/overcast
Shanghai
5
9
clear/cloudy
Wuhan
3
12
cloudy
Hangzhou
3
13
clear/cloudy
Taipei
14
19
overcast
Guangzhou
9
14
drizzle/moderate rain
Hong Kong
13
16
drizzle/heavy rain
Moscow
-3
0
flurry
Frankfurt
4
6
drizzle
Paris
5
7
overcast/drizzle
London
7
9
drizzle
New York
-1
2
clear/sleet
clear
world
Crosswords
Across: 1- Strike breaker; 5- Fountain treats; 10- Kind of radio; 14- Unit of loudness;
15- More aloof; 16- Raised platform; 17- In spite of; 20- Sedate; 21- RR stop; 22- As ___
resort; 23- Director Browning; 25- Jack of “The Great Dictator”; 27- Signal that danger
is over; 31- Firstborn; 35- Ark builder; 36- Seam where two bones are fused; 38- RR
stop; 39- ___ bin ein Berliner; 40- Debussy subject; 41- Wrap up; 42- Univ. aides;
43- Back muscle, briefly; 44- Fit for cultivation; 46- Mickey’s creator; 47- Bring out;
49- Dependable; 51- “Who’s there?” reply; 53- Letters on a Cardinal’s cap; 54- Manila
hemp plant; 57- Small battery size; 59- Gumbo pods; 63- Direct; 66- Look after; 67Oohed and ___; 68- Juan’s water; 69- Draft classification; 70- Oodles; 71- Pull abruptly;
Condition
China
Easy+
Pisces
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Max
Useful telephone numbers
Emergency calls 999
Taxi 28 939 939 / 2828 3283
Fire department 28 572 222
Water Supply – Report 1990 992
PJ (Open line) 993
Telephone – Report 1000
PJ (Picket) 28 557 775
Electricity – Report 28 339 922
PSP 28 573 333
Macau Daily Times 28 716 081
Customs 28 559 944
S. J. Hospital 28 313 731
Kiang Wu Hospital 28 371 333
Commission Against
Corruption (CCAC) 28326 300
IACM 28 387 333
Tourism 28 333 000
Airport 59 888 88
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18
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12.01.2015 mon
th Anniversary
廣告
mon 12.01.2015
SPORTS
th Anniversary
體育
19
Football | Asian Cup
Iran beats Bahrain, UAE downs Qatar
E
ap photo
Neil Frankland
Sports Writer, Melbourne
hsan Hajsafi and Masoud Shojaei scored late
in each half to give Iran a
2-0 win over a determined Bahrain in their opening match of the Asian Cup yesterday.
In a contest that started at
a frenetic pace with plenty of
chances for each side, Hajsafi
finally made the breakthrough
for Iran in the second minute of
first-half stoppage time.
Hajsafi gathered an attempted clearance from an Andranik
Teymourian corner to fire the
ball from just outside the area
over the Bahrain defense and the
outstretched arms of goalkeeper
Sayed Mohamed Abbas.
Iran doubled its lead in the 71st
minute when Masoud collected
a Teymourian cross and guided
the ball past the near post.
Iran takes a share of first place
in Group C with the United Arab
Emirates with one win each.
Earlier, Ahmed Khalil and Ali
Mabkhout scored two goals each
as the UAE took advantage of a
series of goalkeeping errors to
beat Qatar 4-1 in the Group C
opener in Canberra.
The Melbourne match was
virtually a home game for
the Iranians with most of the
17,700-strong crowd at the Rectangular Stadium made up of
chanting Iran fans dressed in
UAE’s Omar Abdulrahman, left, and Qatar’s Ahmed Mohamed Elsayed battle for the ball during the first round soccer match of
the AFC Asia Cup between the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Canberra, Australia
the team's white, red and green.
The Bahrainis were determined not to be awed by their
higher-ranked opponents and
took advantage of every opportunity to threaten the Iran goal.
Iran had three goals called
back for offside, while Reza
Ghoochannejhad came close to
scoring early in the second half
when he forced a scrambling
save from Abbas with a slow
shot from inside the box toward
the left corner of the goal.
Bahrain's best chance of the
second half came when Teymourian was called for tripping
Faouzi Aaish, but Husain Baba
Mohamed's free kick cleared the
wall only to be easily saved by
Iran 'keeper Alireza Haghighi.
In Canberra, Qatar goalkeeper
Qasem Burhan was at least partially responsible for three goals
in a blundering opener for the
2014 Gulf Cup champions.
"He made two mistakes but
this is football," said Qatar coach Djamel Belmadi. "In the previous competition, he was the
best goalkeeper of the tournament. Today, was not his day ...
but the defenders also did not
Skiing
Germany’s Dopfer leads World
Cup slalom; Hirscher 3rd
ap photo
the first four starters.
"It was the key," said
Dopfer, who will be last
to race in the afternoon.
"I had an advantage for
the first run but kind of a
disadvantage for the second run because I have
a high (start) number."
Hirscher can take the
season-long slalom standings lead from Felix
Neureuther of Germany,
who started sixth but failed to finish.
After winning the giant
help him."
Despite the Qatar errors, the
UAE fully deserved the win and
started well with Khalil and
Mabkhout both shooting wide
from close range in the opening
10 minutes.
It was Qatar, however, which
took the lead midway through the first half. Majed Naser
blocked an initial shot from
Mohammed Muntari but Khalfan Ibrahim, positioned on the
edge of the area, chested the ball
down and lobbed it back beautifully over the head of the retreating UAE goalkeeper.
The UAE equalized nine minutes before the break when Qasem
spilled a cross and, after a scramble in a crowded area, a defensive
goal-line clearance from a Khalil
header bounced off the striker's
chest and into the net.
Khalil's free kick early in the
second half deceived Qasem and
bounced into the far corner of
the Qatari goal.
Khamis Esmaeel's well-struck
free kick was parried by the Qatari goalkeeper into the path of
Mabkhout, who scored into an
empty net from close range. The
striker added another goal in the
89th, ensuring the UAE scored
four goals in an Asian Cup game
for the first time.
The UAE squad remains in
Canberra to take on Bahrain
on Thursday, when Qatar plays
Iran in Sydney. AP
slalom Saturday, Hirscher should again extend his overall standings lead. The 25-year-old
Austrian has won this
race the past three years
on his way to taking the
overall title.
Olympic champion Mario Matt, who edged his
teammate Hirscher for
gold in Sochi, also failed
to complete his run.
Ted Ligety of the United
States was 14th-fastest,
1.98 back, after racing
through fog at the top of
J
Germany’s Fritz Dopfer
F
ritz Dopfer of Germany made his No.
1 start bib count to lead
the first run of a World
Cup slalom yesterday.
Dopfer used the best
conditions to clock 56.21
seconds in steady snow
on a rain-softened course, 0.10 ahead of Italy's
Patrick Thaler.
Marcel Hirscher of Austria was third, with 0.75
to make up on Dopfer in
the afternoon second run.
The top three were among
apanese teenager Sara
Takanashi won her second
straight ski jumping World Cup
event yesterday.
The 18-year-old Takanashi had
jumps of 87 and 97 meters at
the Miyanomori hill for a total of
236.3 points.
Takanashi, who won her first
World Cup event Saturday at the
same venue, is bidding for her
third straight overall World Cup
title.
Olympic champion Carina Vogt
of Germany was second with
230.7 points after jumps of 93.5
and 94 meters. Chiara Hoelzl
of Austria was third with 230.4
points.
The win allowed Takanashi to
move into first place in the overall World Cup standings with
260 points, 50 ahead of Daniela
Iraschko-Stolz of Austria who
was fourth in Sunday's competition.
Slovenia's Spela Rogelj is in
third place with 186 points.
ap photo
Takanashi wins 2nd ski jumping
the course.
"I had a pretty mediocre
run," said Ligety. "Now
I'm stuck in my usual slalom second-run purgatory position between 10
and 20."
Host nation Switzerland had another difficult
run after failing to place
a GS racer in the top 20
on Saturday.
The only Swiss racer in
the top 30 qualifying for
a second run was 24th-­
placed Luca Aerni, 2.73
behind Dopfer. AP
Pope baptizes 33 babies
BUZZ in Sistine Chapel
Air quality
Station
12.01.2015
mon
THE
Rear Window
Severo Portela
On winning quietly
Running against the unspoken rule, Chui Sai
On’s second term began immediately after the
Chief Executive was inaugurated on the SAR’s
15th anniversary. Usually, things go smoothly until
sometime deep in the coming January, giving the
political agenda time to sharpen and the political
agents a few more days to prepare for the new
cycle. That used to be protocol, indeed.
One can attribute the past deferments to a conservative pace, further slowed down by the holiday season, or to any other inconvenient tradition, but that is
not relevant to our purpose, which is to find out why
the government Secretaries seem to be running full
throttle. And pardon me the exaggeration.
We believe that one has to look for an explanation for the Secretaries’ sudden urgency to intervene publicly about their portfolios in Chui Sai On’s
refined political strategy, which brought him to a
second solid term.
Back in 2014, social and economic problems, like
housing, transportation and labor, were piling up
to the point of being voiced loudly. MSAR citizens
were aiming criticism directly at the Chief Executive – if it is not fair, it is at least common in politics
to hold the top official accountable.
Instead of blaming it all on the political Secretaries, Chui acknowledged insufficiencies and
errors, allowing the idea that he was assuming
serious problems arising in each and every portfolio of his entire government to settle quietly in the
hearts and minds of the people.
Later the strategy paid off – twice. First, Chui won
the “right” to a second term to correct the wrongdoings of others, for which he was taking the blame, and secondly the right to have a completely
refurbished government to do that. What had a
much more decisive impact upon his political fate
was the handling of the May demonstrations, as
well as the quiet defusing of the civic consultation
on democracy. The May 25 and 27 actions proved
Chui to be the man for the job to keep social and
political activism under the NPC reading of the Macau Basic Law.
Secondly, Chui won again by means of refractive
politics, or rather the correct reading of the so-called Macau second system. In spite of the “mute”
admission of the errors of others, the Chief Executive was not to blame for the ineffective handling
of portfolios, since if he actually was, the Central
Government and President Xi himself would not
have endorsed a second five-year term. However,
there were errors, and they had faces: Florinda
Chan, Lao Sio Io, Francis Tam, Cheong Kuoc Vá
and Chong U.
But now there are new faces in place. Macau
people and the CE expect better performances
in order to address and effectively correct errors.
The new faces will answer for their portfolios – immediately. That is why the new government Secretaries rushed to duty from the starting block on
December 20, 2014, although they’re running differently. From Secretary Alexis Tam, who took the
lead and opted for an overexposed media style, to
the more defensive approach of Sonia Chan and
Wong Sio Chak, going to Secretary for Transportation and Public Works rusty local political praxis,
and ending with smart and savvy Lionel Leong’s
performance.
Leong, the Secretary for Economy and Finance,
gave priority to meet AGOM, Kai Fong and other
organizations, and wisely kept himself from putting
the cart before the horse. Given the complexity of
his portfolio, Leong did not dare to compromise
with hasty statements. But things are changing –
with no blind optimism, and with a watchful eye on
Macau’s “laissez faire.”
In fact, there are no instant formulas for the majority of the problems. Alexis Tam, Sonia Chan,
Raimundo Rosário, Wong Sio Chak and Lionel
Leong all benefit from an alleged 365-day honeymoon period, the same 365 days they attribute to
the directors of the departments under their portfolios.
365 days from now, both Secretaries and Directors are liable to become the CE’s political gambit.
season. The 13 infant boys and 20 infant girls,
including a set of twins, were all the children of
Vatican employees.
During his homily, Francis repeated an invitation extended to mothers on the same occasion last year to feed their children, “also now,
if they are crying for hunger, nurse them.”
The annual ceremony is held the first Sunday
after the Jan. 6 Epiphany.
US: Iowa State student’s
death ruled a homicide
source: dsmg
opinion
Pope Francis has baptized 33 babies in the
Sistine Chapel as part of an annual tradition,
this year repeating an invitation to mothers to
nurse their babies if crying out of hunger.
Francis pronounced each baby’s name and
poured water from a golden shell-shaped cup
on to their foreheads during the ceremony yesterday, welcoming them into the faith.
The event marked the end of the Christmas
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WORLD BRIEFS
India-USA U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry is in India
to attend an international
investment conference and
push trade ties with the giant
South Asian nation ahead
of visit by President Barack
Obama later this month.
Iraq An Iraqi military
spokesman says 30
members of the Kurdish
peshmerga have been
killed during a battle with
Islamic State group militants
in the country’s north.
The spokesman for the
Iraqi Kurdish force in Irbil,
Halgurd Hekmat, told AP
yesterday that the clashes
erupted Saturday when the
extremists approached the
town of Gwer outside the
northern city of Mosul, held
by the Islamic State group.
Croatia A liberal
Tong Shao
T
he death of an Iowa
State University student who was found in the
trunk of her car outside an
Iowa City apartment building last year has been ruled a homicide.
The Johnson County medical examiner issued a
death certificate last week
for 20-year-old Tong Shao,
listing the immediate cause
of death as asphyxia and
the manner of death as
homicide, the Des Moines
Register reported (dmreg.
co/1A2YWdr).
Shao was a junior chemical engineering student
from China. Her body was
found Sept. 26 in the trunk
of her car. The medical exa-
miner’s office completed
her autopsy report months ago, but declined at the
time to publicly release it at
the request of the Iowa City
Police Department.
Authorities have said
they’re looking for Xiangnan Li, a friend of Shao’s
who was a registered student at the University of
Iowa around the time Shao
went missing in September. Authorities have said
they believe he may have
information about Shao’s
death.
A police search of Li’s
apartment on the day
Shao’s body was found
seemed to show he left the
apartment in a hurry. A
police report says a black
suitcase filled with clothing
was found in the apartment, and groceries that
had recently been purchased also had not been put
away, including spoiled
milk left on a counter.
Ames police say Li took
a flight from Cedar Rapids
on Sept. 8 and arrived in
China on Sept. 10. A report
by Ames police says none
of Li’s friends or family in
China have reported seeing
him.
Iowa City police said earlier this week that they have
finished their investigation
and have turned the case
over to the Johnson County
Attorney’s Office. AP
The
decisive moment
AP Photo/Jason DeCrow
incumbent faces a
tough challenge from a
conservative rival in Croatia’s
presidential runoff election
that is held amid deep
discontent over economic
woes in the European
Union’s newest member.
Yesterday vote is seen as
a major test for Croatia’s
center-left government,
which is facing parliamentary
elections this year under
a cloud of criticism over
its handling of the crisis. A
conservative triumph could
shift Croatia back to rightwing nationalism.
Germany Chancellor
Angela Merkel has told
Russian President Vladimir
Putin and Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko
she’s ready to take part in
four-way summit over the
Ukraine conflict only if there’s
a chance of real progress.
The leaders of Germany,
Russia, Ukraine and France
are working on setting up a
possible meeting in Astana,
Kazakhstan.
Rugby England No. 8 Ben
Morgan will miss the Six
Nations, starting Feb 6, after
breaking his left leg in club
rugby action with Gloucester
on Friday. Morgan was
hurt in the second half of
a Premiership win over
Saracens, and the club
offered no timetable when he
might return.
New York, Washington Square Park. A demostrator wears a sign reading “ I am Ahmed”, which refers
to Muslim policeman Ahmed Merabet, who was shot dead outside the office of Charlie Hebdo. All over
the world people are gathering in solidarity with victims of the two terrorist attacks in Paris, one at the
office of weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and another at a kosher market.
Tennis Roger Federer
notched his 1,000th career
victory and collected his 83rd
title with a seesawing 6-4, 6-7
(2), 6-4 win over Milos Raonic
in the Brisbane International
final yesterday. Only retired
greats Jimmy Connors
(1,253) and Ivan Lendl (1,071)
have won more than 1,000
matches on the men’s tour.